Pedalboard Tips #7 - What To Look For In A Compressor Pedal ? 

Nathan Shafer The blend knob is my life (ok, maybe not that much!)

No problem, thanks for watching :)

VolcaRock Yes, for many people, the extra noise is not worth it, but I find the Deep Six Compressor is very quiet !

No one TRULY needs a compressor. You can very well play without it. However, it's just the little polish, the little icing on the cake. It makes your clean tones shine, your swells sustain more. Brings up clarity. So, no, it's not a must. But a lot of players adopt it on their board for those reasons.

Monochrome Seasons thanks a looooottttt Antoine! You're awesome!

Gabriel De La O Yes, for both that could certainly help contain some of it, but it's not quite normal to have so many volume peaks and changes. Did you check the boost setting on your BigSky?

I have tried several compressors before, but none with a blend knob. I wanted to buy one with a blend knob... I had many options and I was curious about Walrus Audio pedals which I heard only good things of, so I went with this one and was happy with my decision!

Still using it, and just second after my tuner in my chain!

@@AntoineMichaudGuitar are you still running it? I'm looking for a compressor pedal I don't have one and it's hard to tell what's good online

Maybe it's not necessary to change, but just understanding it better makes a big difference :)

Too late, already done!

Salut! Fait toujours plaisir de parler avec du monde du Québec! Le Deep Six de Walrus Audio sur cette vidéo est mon compresseur préféré depuis des années! Et j'en ai essayé beaucoup! Je le trouve aussi efficace que plusieurs, mais en moins noisy. Je trouve que le blend et l'attack sont plus ''responsive''. Sinon, le Keeley 4 Knobs est très hot aussi. Ça serait mes deux suggestions qui te coûteraient presque 200$ de moins qu'un Cali 76. Ils sont difficiles à trouver usagé par exemple, il faut être patient. Ceci étant dit, je l'utiliserais justement plus pour les bouts clean/expérimental, car de la disto métal compresse déjà beaucoup le son et ça deviendrait trop noisy. Moi j'enlèverais le compresseur pour les bouts heavy ou je mettrais un settings très très léger. A+

Ah, bizarre! Moi l'Attack «tardive» ne m'a jamais dérangée sur la Walrus, mais peut-être que c'est justement le son que je recherche davantage. Ça doit être une question de goût. Dans le monde de l'audio, on va dire que oui, l'attaque et le release vont sonner différemment selon la pédale/plugin, mais honnêtement, ça revient pas mal au même... Pour l'extrait, ça me sonne comme un reverb spring avec un hyper long decay (ce qui n'est habituellement pas possible avec un vrai spring reverb). C'est peut-être plus un reverb plate avec le tone très bright, un long decay et une pédale de vibrato ajoutée pour rajouter de la profondeur avec une oscillation plutôt médium. En gros, reverb de style bright avec long decay, puis une modulation quelconque dans la famille des chorus/vibrato vont de te permettre de te rapprocher de ce résultat! Cheers!

If you ask my personnal opinion, I think this review is wrong on many levels. 1 - Sensitiveness to other pedals noise doesn't really make sense. Of course, a compressor will add some noise to any other pedal you have on, but it is not because of the other pedals, it's just the nature of a compressor itself. It adds noise, because it evens up your sound, and the noise has to go up in order to do it. And I don't get why the Deep Six would do it more than any other compressor pedals... 2 - Even if picking up the noise from other pedals made sense, I really recommend to put your compressor first in your chain after your tuner, so that way, it cannot be affected by something else between your guitar and the compressor pedal. Then, there would be no reasons that it would be ''affected'' by other pedals. 3 - I don't ever recommand using any daisy-chaining power supplies. In fact, it might be the reason for his noise problem if he connected the daisy-chain with other drive pedals or such. I always used mine with proper power bricks' isolated outputs and never got a problem. I even find that the connection is very secure, because the cable really clicks firmly and deeply in it and is very stable, not like some other loose ones you find in cheap pedals. I have it since many years and it is still my favorite compressor pedal. Hope I can make you feel better about your purchase, cause it really is a wonderful pedal to my ears!

thanks for the quick and detailed reply! yes, i do feel better after reading your response. i also have the Diamond Compressor on order to compare with the Deep Six. what i don't like about the Diamond is the obvious missing blend knob, but i hear nothing but great things about the Diamond, so i'll see for myself which is better for my situation. i just bought the Strymon Zuma power supply, so i should have plenty of outputs to allow me to dedicate an isolated output for the Deep Six. however, i was hoping to daisy chain a couple of pedals. worse comes to worse i will add the Strymon Ojai if i run out of outputs. thanks again for your input.

No problem! Getting proper isolated powering for all your pedals is never an investment you can regret later. :)

How'd you get on with it?